What drives the price gap between cyclohexane-d12 and regular cyclohexane?

What drives the price gap between cyclohexane-d12 and regular cyclohexane?
Cyclohexane-d12, the fully deuterated analogue of cyclohexane, trades at a substantial premium over industrial-grade cyclohexane, which has hovered around 6,900-7,400 yuan per tonne in China. The price differential reflects not feedstock costs but the energy-intensive deuteration process and limited production scale. While regular cyclohexane is produced almost exclusively via benzene hydrogenation at large petrochemical facilities, deuterated material requires heavy water or deuterium gas inputs, constraining output to specialty chemical manufacturers. Demand comes from NMR spectroscopy, isotopic labeling in pharmaceutical R&D, and mechanistic studies in organic chemistry. The Chinese market for cyclohexane-d12 is small but stable, with buyers concentrated in research institutes and drug discovery labs. Supply is dominated by a handful of domestic specialty firms plus imports from established global producers. Pricing tends to be negotiated per order rather than following commodity benchmarks.